[Critique Group 2] Emailing: Bernie's Recurring Nightmare---My piece for our 4-10-18 critique session.

[James]

Bernie's Recurring Nightmare
C By Brad Corallo
Word count 416

The small, desiccated, white haired gentleman sat on the old scarred bench
that ran around three of the walls in the damp, dark, dingy railroad
station. He wore a clean though thread bear grey suit and scuffed black
Oxfords. Between his feet was a stained old duffle bag whose color may once
have been blue.

 A chance sound caused him to try to look through the ancient window glass
which was covered with the grime of years during which time it may never
have known the touch of a cleaning rag. He saw nothing. He said to him self
"she's acommin' down the line, the Glory Train."

 An old woman who snored in the corner echoed in a sleepy voice"she's a
cominn' down the line." 

A ragged old man who was lying under the bench said "how long you been
waitin'?"
 The gentleman, Bernie thought and said "bout a yearin ahalf." "And you
still believe?" the ragged old man asked with contempt. 

"I gotta get home and I'll be agoin' on the Glory Train. She's comin' down
the line" he said with conviction.

"You're a fool" the ragged old man spat. "That train is nothing more than a
myth. Once it was a hope but now, empty wind!"

The sound of automatic rifle fire split the early morning quiet. With that,
three heavily armed, uniformed men crashed through the door and said "no
body move, this station, in fact this entire railroad is now under the rule
of "the peoples liberation front (PLF). 

"Here we go again" said the no longer sleeping woman. 

"I advise you to comply with our orders. If you do, you will not be injured.
But for starters, none of you are going anywhere!"

A terrible awareness lit in Bernie's eyes, "it doesn't matter, we never
were!" he said, in the voice of a man whose eyes were finally opened and
whose last hope was finally dashed. 

NOTE: This piece is based on four lines from the song "What I did on my fall
vacation" by Bruce Cockburn. A recent writing prompt regarding writing short
stories as a result of songs was put forth on our writer's list. These lines
have always been of special importance to me in this song which came out
about 38 years ago. Below is a youtube link. I will leave it to the reader
to find the lines that inspired this piece of flash fiction. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFXUwblZpTA 

jamesstarfire at gmail.com  
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